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Research group Didactics as Communication

We study learning as a social practice within formally as well as informally organized institutions. We do theoretical and empirical studies of teaching and learning as communicative practices where knowledge and knowing take shape.

Foto: Igor Starkov / Mostphotos

Group description

With a variety of methods, we study how knowledge is represented and communicated as well as conditions for representing and communicating knowledge. Through analysis of discourse, interaction and educational ethnography we study how knowledge is shaped and transformed when communicated over time and space as well as in direct interaction.

Central domains are the design and organization of educational activities and resources for knowledge communication and identity formation in physical and digital settings, within formal education as well as working life and civil society. We do studies that contribute to an understanding of learning as social achievement, by investigating social interaction and communicative discourses and resources. We analyze actions, objects, relations and structures as expressions and resources for learning from the perspectives of discourse theories, institution theories, and social semiotics.

The focus is upon questions of learning and teaching as social practices with an interest in the organization of such practices; how content is delimited, represented and made meaningful; how digital and analog tools and texts is incorporated and how they affect and change conditions and processes in teaching and learning practices; how assessment practices affect what is recognized as valid knowledge and how they shape practices of teaching and learning. We also study how such questions are treated in textbooks, teaching media, policy texts and public media. Together this span how different actors at different levels of power and practice influence each other.